Spotty Handed Villainesses: Notes

Author: Margaret Atwood

Date: 1994

Personal Context

Atwood was born in 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
Is a well-known Canadian writer, who is internationally recognised for her novels, poetry, short stories, and literary criticism.
Through the heroines in her novels, Atwood explores how society shaped the lives of women.

Historical/Social Context

Delivered in 1994.
In the 1960s, there was a strong feminist push, known as second wave feminism. It focused upon fighting the oppression of women in society and the need for equal rights.
By the early 1990s (when Atwood made this speech), this had become third wave feminism. It was in a way a response to the backlash of second wave feminism.
There was a clash between extreme feminists and counter feminists. There was questions of what feminism meant and the changed roles of men/women.

Purpose

To question the role of women in novels, and whether or not the 1970s Feminist Movement has affected the portrayal of them.
To inform and challenge the views and attitudes of her audience in regards to the portrayal of women in literature.

Audience

The speech is shaped carefully to communicate with a Canadian audience.
Listeners appear to have been largely educated older, or middle-aged, women of European descent with an interest in literature.
Would have understood the literary and Biblical allusions used in the speech, and would have related to the examples drawn from Atwood’s daily life.

Techniques

Humour: Atwood creates humour in many ways. Examples of this include:

Simile: The process of writing a novel is described as like “paint-by-numbers” and “wrestling a greased pig in the dark”
Simile: A novel is compared to a bank robbery, “as if the novel itself were a kind of bank robbery”
Metaphor: The metaphor of an elimination-dance (a dance in which some dancers are eliminated from a dance competition each time the music stops) is used to describe a list of what a novel is not - “... so here, for easy reference, is an elimination-dance list of what novels are not.”
Analogy: To describe the complaints made by many women that she does not create strong enough main characters, Atwood uses the idea of God in terms of being a manager to which unhappy customers can complain to, “I feel that this is

“Shakespeare is not big on breakfast openings” uses the irreverent treatment of Shakespeare in the colloquial “is not big on” (ironic due to typical reverential treatment of the dramatist by literary critics)
“... female vampires were usually mere sidekicks; but there are now new female werewolves, and women are moving in on the star bloodsucking roles as well.” The use of the terms sidekick and moving in on mimics the language of the hardboiled detective fiction that became popular in American films in the twentieth century. The style contrasts with the more formal style used to discuss the nature of heroines.

Throughout the course of the speech, Atwood’s tone is irreverent and flippant; this comes from her use of incongruous images to illustrate her points, “To keep you from being too depressed, let me emphasise that none of this means that you, personally, cannot find happiness with a good man, a good woman, or a good pet canary.” This sentence uses bathos in terms of moving the sentence to a climax, then ending it anticlimactically. The pet canary is also a satirical comment on the whole issue of meaningful relationships.

Atwood plays on the similarity between the nouns gender and genre in, “in an age not only of gender cross-over, but of genre crossover” to enhance the humour derived from the sexual allusion.
Alliteration is used humorously in the phrase “sin scale” - to describe how modern society rates different female sins - and “sex-saint” to describe the heroine in The Scarlet Letter.

Juxtaposing the social and cultural context of literary texts and modern social values

Lady Macbeth is compared to the modern corporate-wife who will do anything to advance her husband’s career. Lady MacBeth’s nightmares and suicide are translated into a nervous breakdown, caused by the suppression of her own needs.

Other Devices

The personal anecdote, i.e. the ‘breakfast’ play performed by her daughter helps Atwood to create a connection with her intended audience (see above)
Literary and Biblical allusions which are familiar to the audiences she usually addresses

	Created by Hunter Lynch over 10 years ago

Secondary Advanced English (Module B: Speeches) Note on Module B: Speeches (Spotty Handed Villainesses), created by Hunter Lynch on 26/06/2014.

Module B: Speeches (Spotty Handed Villainesses)